I think it would fair to say that there are essentially TWO great products bundled into this excellent (free) download.

The first part is the actual rule-set for the Board Game Desperate Gods. I would best describe it as a fun little amalgamation of Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering.

Players travel around a dungeon, drawing monster cards to battle and defeat, and thus winning coins. The coins are used to purchase equipment so that the players can better survive the more dangerous inner-levels of the dungeon. The final goal is to clear out the entire dungeon and then add up the ‘victory points’ each player has earned while slaying beasties. Occasionally a player will have the option of selecting a monster to battle out of a few choices. This adds an additional level of strategy as one must decide whether they want to battle a monster that offers lots of victory points but no cash, or vice versa.

Overall, I think the basics of this rule-set are on the right track. I can’t comment on the game beyond its solid basic premise since I have not put in the hours of gaming yet. Only plenty of community play testing will weed out the broken / wonky bits for further adjustment. Not that big of a deal in my opinion. Personally, I’m very impressed at the solid rules that the Wolfire team came up with in only 7 days of testing!

Fun game rules aside, the true beauty of this project is the excellent networked physics engine that David has produced for us. Essentially, the ability to play ANY type of card game or board game imaginable (through an online network) is right there before us. Players and modders just need to generate their own cards, pieces and play area. I TRULY hope that the Wolfire guys see the huge resource they have created for us oldschool gamers. With just a few modifications you could employ the DG engine for Chess, Checkers, Mancala etc… (This is particularly exciting for folks who want to play ancient games like Quirkat or Senet). Make some polyhedral die models and you could be running your own virtual D&D session with friends from every corner of the world. Gamers love to select and paint their own personalized miniatures. How fun would it be to import your personal model into the DG engine? The possibilities are truly endless!

David and OG friends: if you ever decide to open the engine up for community modification, I suggest you call it ‘Desperate Gamer’.

Glabbit wrote:The 'Engine' we refer to is not Unity, but the tabletop.

Yeah. I've only dabbled into the teensiest bit of Overgrowth coding. I rarely use the correct terms for these things. I'm sure most of the basic physics are already built into Unity. I'm more excited about the actions David has made for picking up cards and dice, flipping, rolling them etc...

I actually wrote up a list of important game commands in the original DG thread (as well as a short wish list). I think that three additional actions would make this game perfect: Shuffle Deck, Cut Deck, and commands for rotating a single die in any direction.

Djemps wrote:I actually wrote up a list of important game commands in the original DG thread (as well as a short wish list). I think that three additional actions would make this game perfect: Shuffle Deck, Cut Deck, and commands for rotating a single die in any direction.

Shuffle deck is already in the game. Pick up a deck, and shake it the same way you would the dice before rolling. You can double check that it's really shuffling if you hold the deck face up.

I'd love to see a version of Munchkin ported into the setting. I think it would work perfectly. The one thing missing right now though for card games is to be able to have a private "hand" that you can draw from. I think with a little tweaking (and the card editor that David made) prototyping any type of card game in game would be a relatively simple task.

I'm sure it's around somewhere... It was a WIP thing I played with during the game jam, and people seemed to be using it here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16919&start=15#p179432
but I don't know where it is in the final game (if it's in the final game...). But I bet you could find it in the source code if you go looking for it.

EDIT:

So, the card thing I linked to was not what I had originally thought. That was something made by SteelRaven7, and is a cool preview tool.
It turns out that David had also made a card preview tool for Aubrey, that Aubrey had linked to me, but it didn't actually have anything to do with the final game. So I was wrong about the card editor. Sorry about that.

I would be very interested in poking around inside DG and trying to make a simple mod. I simply have no idea where to begin. Do I need to purchase / download any specific Unity editing software? What about Github?